Senior homes refuse to pick up fallen residents, dial 911. ‘Why are they calling us?’

Frustrated cities and states have begun fining facilities for nonemergency calls, but some just keep calling

Ed note: When I moved into our independent living residence 10 years ago, I was instructed that if a resident falls or is found down, that the staff must always call 911 and not to touch the patient other that trying to make them comfortable.

However, a resident can be down for a number of reasons: a simple slip without injury; a fall hitting one’s head; a fall with a hip, leg or shoulder fracture; a cardiac arrhythmia casing low blood pressure; or even a heart attack with cardiac arrest.

Things have improved a bit over the years. We have balance and fall prevention sessions; grab bars are in most residences (we had to pay to have ours installed). We now allow staff to perform CPR if indicated and we offer training in the use of AED’s.

Falls are nuanced. I have tripped and fallen and gotten myself up. Some, when seeing a slip and fall by a resident, will bring a chair to them and allow the resident (who denies pain or injury) to pull themselves up. So common sense can come into play. Yes, we or our facility can be sued, but that’s part of life these days. Independent and Assisted Living are not really staffed to safely evaluate and lift a resident up in many situations. In talking to 911 responders they’ve told me, “Please do call us, we don’t mind and we’d rather you didn’t try to lift someone up.” So, I think this article may not reflect the excellent service we have in Seattle. It also seems to ignore the serious injuries or medical issues that may be associated with a fall.

By Todd C. Frankel in the Washington Post (thanks to Frank C. and Deborah C.)

ROCKFORD, Ill. — The 911 call came just before 8 a.m., and Ladder 5′s four-man crew scrambled to the truck just as their overnight shift was about to end. It was the kind of call that veteran firefighter Chad Callison said he dreaded.

It was not a heart attack, or a car crash or a building fire.

It was a “lift assist” at Heritage Woods, a local assisted-living facility.

Lift-assist 911 calls from assisted living and other senior homes have spiked by 30 percent nationwide in recent years to nearly 42,000 calls a year, an analysis of fire department emergency call data by The Washington Post has found. That’s nearly three times faster than the increase in overall 911 call volume during the same 2019-2022 period, the data shows.

The growth has infuriated first responders who say these kinds of calls — which involve someone who has fallen and is not injured but can’t get up — unfairly burden taxpayers and occupy firefighters with nonemergencies that should be handled by staff at facilities that charge residents as much as $7,000 a month.

Illinois is a hot spot for the controversy: Lift assists here accounted for 1 in 20 of all 911 fire calls, the highest proportion of any state, the data shows. In Rockford, a city of 150,000 residents about an hour outside Chicago, five assisted-living facilities — including Heritage Woods — called for noninjury lift assists 233 times last year, triple the number of calls in 2021.

When firefighters arrived at Heritage Woods that morning, caretakers at the facility directed them to an elderly resident lying on the floor. She was perfectly fine, she said, she just couldn’t get back on her feet by herself. The facility’s staff wouldn’t lift her. So two firefighters helped her up and made sure she was okay, Callison recalled and fire records show. Ten minutes after arriving on the scene, Ladder 5 was back in service.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Callison said. “Why are they calling us?”

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